•   When: Wednesday, January 29, 2020 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
•   Speakers: Sanmay Das
•   Location: Research Hall 163
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Abstract
Demand for resources that are collectively controlled or regulated by society, like social services or organs for transplantation, typically far outstrips supply. How should these scarce resources be allocated? Any approach to this question requires insights from computer science, economics, and beyond; we must define objectives (foregrounding equity and distributive justice in addition to efficiency), predict outcomes (taking causal considerations into account), and optimize allocations, while carefully considering agent preferences and incentives. In this talk, I will discuss our work on weighted matching and assignment in two domains, namely living donor kidney transplantation and provision of services to homeless households. My focus will be on how effective prediction of the outcomes of matches has the potential to dramatically improve social welfare both by allowing for richer mechanisms and by improving allocations.

Brief bio: Sanmay Das is an associate professor in Computer Science and Engineering and the chair of the steering committee of the newly formed Division of Computational and Data Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. He is chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence and a member of the board of directors of the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. He is an associate editor of the ACM Transations on Economics and Computation and of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. Dr. Das has served as program co-chair of the AAMAS and AMMA conferences, and has been recognized with awards for research, service, and teaching, including an NSF CAREER Award and the Department Chair Award for Outstanding Teaching at Washington University.